"Do you think he's okay?" Leo asked Janet quietly as he leaned against the kitchen counter in Harry and Nikki's place, looking through the gap in the wall to the living room where Niall was curled up on the couch watching something on the television. His partner sighed, looking up as well and then going back to cutting up the mushrooms on the chopping board, shaking her head.
"He's a teenage boy, you know as well as I do they're not good at expressing themselves or talking about their feelings. Especially when he's been through what he has up until now" Janet responded, looking to Leo and rubbing his arm "He's had a hard week, and now he's had this added to it when he thought that everything was going to be okay. Go and speak with him"
Leo nodded, rubbing his chin before kissing Janet and picking up the hot chocolate he had made for Niall. Walking through to the living room, he handed the mug to the teenager who gave him a small smile but said nothing else, cradling the mug in his hands and looking back at the television. Leo sat himself down on the other end of the sofa, looking at the television for a few seconds then back to Niall.
"How are you feeling?"
Niall shrugged, looking at Leo and then down to the drink in his hands, fiddling with the spoon that was in the mug.
"We were out of marshmallows"
"I know, Nikki puts them in a box in the cupboard and me and Harry eat them when she's not looking" Niall smiled into his mug, laughing slightly "Nikki hates that, always tells us off"
Leo chuckled and nodded, that sounded like a thing that Harry would do to annoy Nikki. He watched Niall closely for a few more seconds.
"It's okay to be confused by your feelings"
"I'm not, I'm just worried" Niall whispered, biting his lip and shrugging "He's not going to be okay, is he? The baby"
"I can't sit here and promise you that he will be okay" Leo told Niall after thinking about how to word it, he wasn't talking to a doctor, he was talking to a teenage boy who was hurting and scared for his brother and foster-mother. "Because I can't guarantee that he will be, but I know that all those doctors and nurses are working their hardest to keep him happy and safe, Nikki as well"
"Will she be okay?"
Leo nodded, not wanting to go into details about what Nikki had gone through with Niall, as truthful as he wanted to be he was still a boy and that was still his foster-mother they were talking about.
"It will take some time, but we're all here for her, and for Harry, and for you. So if you want to talk or ask anything you just need to ask us okay"
"Okay"
Nikki watched quietly from the bed as Harry stood with his hands on the wheelchair near her, the nurse on the other side of the bed doing some checks before they were going to try and get her into the wheelchair to go and see her baby. She hadn't even seen a picture of him yet, but Harry had assured her that he was tiny but very beautiful. She had woken up almost five hours before to the news that she had delivered her baby and that he was in the care of the specialist neonatal ward a few floors below, she couldn't remember any of it, despite the doctor telling her that they hadn't had time to send her for a c-section after she started bleeding, the baby had been delivered in barely any time after the bleeding had started. She wasn't sure if she wanted to remember or not, perhaps her brain had blocked it out for a reason, and she wasn't about to force herself to remember it. She desperately wanted to see her baby though, but they had refused until they had done thorough checks on her to make sure that she was able to go even if she was just sitting in a wheelchair.
"Nikki?"
She blinked and looked at Harry when she heard him say her name, giving him a small barely there smile when he put his hand on her head and leaned down to kiss her forehead, stroking her hair with his thumb and sighing softly.
"How are you feeling?"
"I want to see our baby" Nikki whispered, biting her lip as her voice broke and Harry nodded.
"I know, let the doctors and nurses see if you're okay too, then I'll take you to see him"
Nikki nodded quickly, reaching up to wipe her cheeks free from tears, sniffing and letting Harry hand her a tissue. It had taken her a few hours to come to terms with the fact that she had had her baby, and he wasn't there beside her, kept touching her stomach and expecting to feel the baby move. The thought of her baby laying alone in an incubator somewhere else in the hospital made her feel sick.
"Come on then Nikki, lets get you to see your baby"
"You mean that?" Nikki asked the nurse as she tried to push herself up, Harry moving forward to help her as the nurse smiled and nodded, clipping the notes to the end of the bed "Harry?"
"I'm here, we'll go and see our little lad and he can meet his mummy"
Nikki nodded quickly, wiping her eyes with the tissue again and willing herself not to cry now that she was so close to finally being able to see her baby. Harry moved to kiss her head again, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs and leaning down to look at her as the nurse called for another person to come and help them.
"Harry" Nikki reached for her partner's hand as they got into the room where their son was in the incubator, her eyes not leaving it from where she was still in the wheelchair that Harry had used to take her down. Harry took her hand and kneeled next to the chair so he was eye level with her, kissing her knuckles and being careful of where they had left the cannula in her arm to put her drip on and off as needed for her comfort. "I'm scared"
"It's okay" Harry kissed her hand again and smiled at her, stroking her knuckles with his thumb "We can take as long as you like"
"The little one is doing very well" the nurse in charge of their baby smiled at them both from where she was standing by the incubator "I think he knows that he's had a lot of people visiting who love him, and now his mummy is here to see him"
Nikki nodded quickly, sniffing and wiping her eyes and nose again. She didn't know what she was scared for, she wanted to see her baby so badly it was making her physically hurt.
"I think the baby got bored of listening to me and Niall talk earlier, and me and Leo" Harry joked with her, making her laugh tearfully "He wants to hear someone else's voice that isn't mine"
"I doubt that" Nikki smiled through her tears, holding out her other hand for Harry "Help me up"
"Are you sure?"
Nikki nodded, wincing slightly as Harry helped her to her feet, putting one arm around her back to keep her steady as she got used to being on her feet again. This wasn't how either of them imagined meeting their baby, but this was what life had given them so it's what they had to deal with. She gripped his shirt tightly for a few seconds, before she let him help her over to the incubator, her heart feeling like it was going to burst out of her chest it was beating that fast.
"Oh" she breathed when she saw her baby for the first time, laying in amongst the blankets and sheets at the bottom of the incubator, wires and tubes coming from every direction. "Oh my baby I'm sorry" Nikki whispered, her voice breaking as she put her hand on the side of the incubator and bit her lip, feeling Harry rubbing her back as she took their baby all in for the first time. She bit her lip so hard that she tasted blood and Harry pulled her close when she started to cry, resting their heads together and kissing her head.
"It's not your fault"
"I should have left when you told me"
"And you would have regretted not helping the students" Harry whispered, nuzzling his nose into her hair and smiling at the baby in the incubator "I think he looks like you"
That made her laugh tearfully and she looked at Harry who wiped her cheeks again with the tissue from his pocket.
"Where did his little hat come from?" she then asked quietly, looking back at the baby and seeing a tiny lemon yellow hat on his head, keeping it warm. She knew that babies lost most of their heat from their head, so at least he had something on there to keep him warm.
"We have volunteers who knit clothes for premmie babies" the nurse smiles at them, standing on the other side of the incubator and looking down at the baby "The yellow was the only one that wasn't too big for him"
"Little lemon" Nikki couldn't help but giggle, covering her mouth with her hand and sniffing despite laughing as well "I called him that once to Niall, our foster son, a few weeks ago when we were looking at how big he was compared to fruit" she continued, keeping her other hand on the side of the incubator as she heard Harry's laugh, another kiss being pressed to his head "Can I touch him?"
"Not yet" the nurse told her softly, seeing Nikki's face drop "We just have to make sure he's a little bit stronger, then we can see about you holding his hand, okay?"
Nikki nodded, sniffing again and wiping her cheeks. She felt a bit better seeing him in front of her, despite how absolutely tiny he was, and how sick. She knew the complications that could arise from a baby being born so prematurely, she even knew that he might not make it, but as long as he knew that he was surrounded by people who loved him then it would all be okay.
"I'll leave you two with him, the doctor may want to come and introduce herself to you"
Harry nodded, mouthing a thank you to the nurse who smiled at him and nodded on her way past and out of the door. Nikki sighed, resting her head on Harry's chest and closing her eyes, keeping her hand on the plastic and wishing she could reach in and touch their son and tell him that everything would be okay, that mummy and daddy were there with him.
"He needs a name"
"Right away?"
Nikki nodded, looking up at Harry's face and swallowing heavily, fiddling with his shirt with her hand that wasn't on the plastic their son was under.
"I want him to have a name, I don't want him..." she cleared her throat and let out a breath "I can't lose him without naming him"
"We're not going to lose him"
"You can't promise me that Harry, don't insult me by telling me that we're not going to lose him or that everything will be okay because we both know what could happen" Nikki told him quickly, shaking her head and looking back at the baby, rubbing the plastic cover with her thumb as though she was touching the baby "It's going to be a long journey and I just want to start it by naming him, he deserves a name"
"Okay" Harry nodded, kissing her head and drawing in a shaky breath, rubbing her arms as he stood behind her and looked over her shoulder at their son "You have a name in mind don't you?"
Nikki smiled, leaning her head back against his chest and closing her eyes, she was mentally and physically exhausted, and she was in pain but she just wanted to stay with her baby boy so he knew that he wasn't on his own.
"I do"
"Harry and the nurses told me that he can hear us" Niall told Nikki over the top of the incubator that he was looking into, he had managed to convince them to give him the day off school, and Leo had phoned the school to explain the situation before dropping him off at the hospital to see Nikki for the first time since the day before and since the baby had been born.
"He can" Nikki nodded at her foster-son from the wheelchair she was sitting in on the opposite side, she had spent the night before waking up every few hours to nurses, and once a doctor, who wanted to check her vitals, and she was sure that she had made the correct career choice to work on dead people rather than wake up poor patients in the middle of the night to ask if they were okay. "And I don't think you should be skipping school today, Niall"
"Not even to sit with my brother?"
Nikki couldn't help but smile at that and sighed, resting her head on her hand on the arm of the wheelchair.
"Okay, but you go to school tomorrow"
"Okay deal, the boys keep asking how he is and I want to tell them that my brother has a name" Niall grinned and Nikki laughed.
"The boys? You should get them around one evening after school, buy some pizza, watch some movies or whatever you do nowadays"
"Won't it be too loud for you?"
"I'm not being let home for a few more days still" Nikki responded, she wanted Niall to at least have something to look forward to and feel like something normal was going on in his life "Ask them round, I'm sure Harry or Leo can watch you all"
"You're not letting us stay there alone?"
"Absolutely not" Nikki gave him a pointed look, moving to push herself from the chair and smiling when Niall quickly walked around to help her up, he was such a good boy, she couldn't want to finally start the adoption process once things had settled down and things stopped getting in their way "I was your age once you know"
She put her hand on the side of the incubator, smiling at the baby.
"Your brother thinks that I'm letting a group of teenagers loose in my house with no adults present" she then looked at Niall and wrapped her arm around his shoulders, kissing his cheek "Things will settle down soon Niall, we'll get the adoption going"
